TNF and leukoplakia: Figure 7 immunohistochemical result clearly demonstrated that the expression intensity and activation levels of proteins associated with the TNF and PI3K-AKT signaling pathways progressively increased with disease progression. The critical activation observed during the leukoplakia stage suggested their pivotal role in mediating malignant transformation. The quantitative H-Score data for P-PI3K, P-AKT, P-MTOR, and TNF-α proteins in rat tissues are provided in Supplementary Table S3.